Rest, Please

"Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28). This verse has been in my face lately.  On Facebook, a lecture text, an academic orientation verse.  It's been one of my favorites since motherhood, and when I read it recently, I intoned,  "Yes!  I want, no, need, rest."  Then I got lectured.  Well, not me directly, but I heard the lecture.  And when the speaker started with that verse, my reaction again was, "Yes, Lord, that is what I need:  REST!" And then the guy elaborated.

He said often when we read that verse, our focus, as mine was, is on what we receive.  And I would add, on what we are.  I am weary.  Everyone agrees that moms are tired. The ubiquitous memes about tired mothers exist because we all relate. We want time to ourselves, so we stay up late. We miss out on sleep, but can't sleep in because the bus comes at 6:40 AM or we wake up at 3:00 AM and can't go back to sleep because our minds are full of plans, problems, pain, and/or pettiness.  I haven't been able to carve out any solitude lately and that has made me grumpy to say the least.  So when I hear a verse describing me and promising something that seems elusive, the response is "Gimme, gimme, PLEASE!"

But that's being a selective Bible verse claimant, treating Jesus like some kind of magical Pez dispenser.  To read the verse and focus on who I am and what I need diminishes the gospel, to borrow the pastor's words, to "a way to meet our needs and desires, a method to solve our problems" and in so doing, "Christianity's benefits become our idolatry."

Reading the verse correctly is to see the first three words as crucial.  They are set off by a comma after all: "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." When the focus is, as it should be, on Christ, then it becomes about who he is and what he freely gives.  Coming to Christ means that I come before him, laying down my schedule, my plans, my desires, my striving, and He, knowing my burdens better than I, understanding my confusion and hurt in ways I may never grasp, He gives me what I cannot manufacture myself, true rest.  All the spa days and Moms' Night Outs in the world cannot give a person peace--perfect peace--but coming to Christ, surrendering to the One who willingly took our burden and our sin upon himself and paid the price for freedom and blessings beyond our imaginings, gives us rest.

On Mother's Day, our first hymn was "O For a Thousand Tongues" and I knew before we started singing that I was going to cry.  When we got to the verse, "Hear him, ye deaf; his praise, ye dumb, your loosened tongues employ;" the tears started to flow. That hymn always makes me think of D. There is nothing more that my eldest would like to do than to sing God's praise. For his birthday, I played and sang at the piano for him; then I had his brothers both sit on the couch with him and sing hymns to wherever he opened the hymnal. Later, my aunt serenaded him by phone using the same method, (I would tell her to what hymn he had turned) and those songs were THE best birthday presents ever.  Now D follows Knox and Ben around with a hymnal, holding it out to them and calling out their names. They will usually sing at least one.  This morning as I was getting dressed to take D to school (we missed the bus), Knox sang several:  "And Can It Be, Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, Joy to the World, How Great Thou Art, Amazing Grace, O Sacred Head."  The third verse of that final hymn rang out in his beautiful, clear, careful treble:

3. What language shall I borrow
to thank thee, dearest friend,
for this thy dying sorrow,
thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever;
and should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never
outlive my love for thee.

And my heart cried out, "Yes!  Let them love you.  Let me love you.  Give me Jesus!"



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